Peggy Whitson Will Take Viewers 250 Miles Off The Earth

NASA astronaut and Expedition 51 commander Peggy Whitson will take viewers 250 miles off the Earth to the International Space Station in the highest resolution video ever broadcast live from space at 1:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 26.

During this event, Whitson will speak with Sam Blackman, chief executive officer and co-founder of AWS Elemental, via an ultra-high-definition (UHD) broadcast transmitted in 4K from the 2017 National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas.

The conversation with Whitson will take place as part of a panel called “Reaching for the Stars: Connecting to the Future with NASA and Hollywood.” The panel will explore how advanced imaging and cloud technologies are taking scientific research and filmmaking to the next level, and will be moderated by Carolyn Giardina, technology editor for the Hollywood Reporter.

Additional panelists are:

NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson

Rodney Grubbs, NASA Imagery Experts program manager

Bernadette McDaid, head of development, virtual reality and augmented reality at Bau Entertainment

Khawaja Shams, vice president of engineering for AWS Elemental

Dave McQueeney, senior principal investigator for the IBM Watson Group

To experience the full effect online, devices capable of viewing 4K UHD content will be required, however, lower resolution streams of the live broadcast will be available on NASA Television, NASA’s Facebook page and the agency’s website.

NanoRacks, a provider of commercial access to the International Space Station through its status as a U.S. National Laboratory, helped certify for launch a UHD-capable video encoder from AWS Elemental. The encoder and a RED Epic Dragon Digital Cinema camera were delivered to the station aboard a Japanese cargo craft in December 2016.